They placed Sylvia on the broad, old-fashioned sofa, and gave her water to drink, and tried to still her sobbing and choking.  They loosed her hat, and copiously splashed her face and clustering chestnut hair, till at length she came to herself; restored, but dripping wet.  She sate up and looked at them, smoothing back her tangled curls off her brow, as if to clear both her eyes and her intellect.

’Where am I?—­oh, I know!  Thank you.  It was very silly, but somehow it seemed so sad!’

And here she was nearly going off again, but Hester said—­

’Ay, it were sad, my poor lass—­if I may call you so, for I don’t rightly know your name—­but it’s best not think on it for we can do no mak’ o’ good, and it’ll mebbe set you off again.  Yo’re Philip Hepburn’s cousin, I reckon, and yo’ bide at Haytersbank Farm?’

‘Yes; she’s Sylvia Robson,’ put in Molly, not seeing that Hester’s purpose was to make Sylvia speak, and so to divert her attention from the subject which had set her off into hysterics.  ’And we came in for market,’ continued Molly, ‘and for t’ buy t’ new cloak as her feyther’s going to give her; and, for sure, I thought we was i’ luck’s way when we saw t’ first whaler, and niver dreaming as t’ press-gang ‘ud be so marred.’

She, too, began to cry, but her little whimper was stopped by the sound of the opening door behind her.  It was Philip, asking Hester by a silent gesture if he might come in.

Sylvia turned her face round from the light, and shut her eyes.  Her cousin came close up to her on tip-toe, and looked anxiously at what he could see of her averted face; then he passed his hand so slightly over her hair that he could scarcely be said to touch it, and murmured—­

’Poor lassie! it’s a pity she came to-day, for it’s a long walk in this heat!’

But Sylvia started to her feet, almost pushing him along.  Her quickened senses heard an approaching step through the courtyard before any of the others were aware of the sound.  In a minute afterwards, the glass-door at one corner of the parlour was opened from the outside, and Mr. John stood looking in with some surprise at the group collected in his usually empty parlour.

‘It’s my cousin,’ said Philip, reddening a little; ‘she came wi’ her friend in to market, and to make purchases; and she’s got a turn wi’ seeing the press-gang go past carrying some of the crew of the whaler to the Randyvowse.

‘Ay, ay,’ said Mr. John, quickly passing on into the shop on tip-toe, as if he were afraid he were intruding in his own premises, and beckoning Philip to follow him there.  ’Out of strife cometh strife.  I guessed something of the sort was up from what I heard on t’ bridge as I came across fra’ brother Jeremiah’s.’  Here he softly shut the door between the parlour and the shop.  ’It beareth hard on th’ expectant women and childer; nor is it to be wondered at that they, being unconverted, rage together (poor creatures!) like the very heathen.  Philip,’ he said, coming nearer to his ’head young man,’ ’keep Nicholas and Henry at work in the ware-room upstairs until this riot be over, for it would grieve me if they were misled into violence.’